Geographic Information Systems (“GIS”) are computer applications used to manipulate and display geographic data. The data is typically stored as geometric objects, each constituting one or more longitude/latitude points (e.g., points, polylines, polygons and polypolygons). Such geometric representations of geographic objects can be extremely complex, depending on the precision of the representation. For example, a state boundary may constitute ten thousand points (sometimes referred to as “nodes”) or more, and a small stretch of coastline can require millions of points if submeter resolution is required.